". . . it is necessary for us to have an understanding of God himself in the beginning. If we start right, it is easy to go right all the time; but if we start wrong, it is a hard matter to get right."
-- Joseph Smith, Nauvoo, Ill. April 7, 1844

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Must Read: The Bible plus

There is a great article at The Christian Century titled The Bible Plus by historian Kathleen Flake, associate professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School and author of The Politics of Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle. A note of clarification, she is a Latter-day Saint and that makes this inclusion in the magazine that much more interesting. Here are some highlights:

A Latter-day Saint friend of mine once invited an evangelical
coworker to church. The coworker found much that was familiar in the LDS
service: hymn singing, an informal sermon style, robust fellowshiping
and scripture-driven Sunday school. But then came the moment when the
Sunday school teacher, after beginning with Genesis, said “Let’s now
turn to the Book of Moses” and began reading: “The presence of God
withdrew from Moses . . . and he said unto himself: Now, for this cause I
know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed.’” I am told
that the visitor reflexively searched through his Bible before he
realized that he’d never heard of such a book, though of course the
story of the burning bush was familiar. And while he didn’t mind the
sentiments expressed in the words he’d heard, he knew that they were not
in his Bible.

This mix of the familiar and the strange is a
common experience for any who have spent even minimal time with the
Latter-day Saints. The greatest contributing factor to this mix is
Mormonism’s dependence on and sophisticated redaction of the Bible. All
of Mormonism, even its most unfamiliar tenants, rests in some element of
the biblical narrative. Academics would explain this in terms of
intertextuality, noting that the meanings of Mormonism, even its unique
scriptures, are achieved within the larger complex of the Christian
canon. You don’t need to be a scholar to recognize this. You need only
open and read the first words you see in any one of Mormonism’s unique
scriptures.

The Latter-day Saint canon consists of four books: the
Bible and three other texts—the Book of Mormon, the Book of Doctrine
and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. Each reads very much like
the Bible in type and breadth of thematic concerns and literary forms
(history, law, psalm). Even the rhetorical stance of each canon is
biblical: God is speaking to prophets faced with temporal crises of
spiritual significance. In terms of the authority granted these four
texts, all have equal weight, including both Bible testaments, as
historical witnesses to God’s promise of salvation, enacted by covenant
with the Israelites and fulfilled in the atonement of Jesus Christ as
the only begotten of the Father.

The LDS Church’s confidence in
the authority and historicity of the Bible is mitigated only by scruples
regarding the Bible’s history as a book. The Bible is “the word of God
insofar as it is translated correctly.” The other three Latter-day Saint
scriptures are also believed to be historical witnesses to God’s
promise of salvation. Considered translations by or direct revelation to
Joseph Smith, the church’s founding prophet, they are considered
correct in their representation of God’s will and word, though they
possibly contain flaws resulting from “the mistakes of men.” What
follows is a brief description of these three texts and a few examples
of how they reshape Christian tradition and influence Latter-day Saint
belief and practice . . .

. . . The effect of this view on the Latter-day Saints’ identity is probably
immeasurable. They believe that God has known them, as he said to
Jeremiah, before they were in the womb and that they are, if faithful,
predestined for glory in Pauline terms. When things get tough, as in the
case of Job, the Saints are to remember the time when “the morning
stars sang together” about what they believe was a loving Father’s plan
for their ultimate glory. On the basis of these alternative accounts of
creation and Moses’ theophany, Latter-day Saints believe that the truest
measure of God’s greatness is his generativity, not his sovereignty or
prescient omniscience that predestines outcomes. Thus, when they voice
their Christian perfectionism in terms of becoming like God, Latter-day
Saints are not aspiring to power over others. As we have seen, the
primordial event in their canon’s salvation history uses Lucifer’s fate
as a warning against such aspiration. Rather, they understand their
divine potential in terms of parenting, even the promise of an endowment
of sanctifying grace that enables the faithful to facilitate spiritual,
not merely physical, birth. To obtain such generativity is, for
Latter-day Saints, why humans exist, and it constitutes the deep
doctrinal stratum of what is typically seen as merely a sentimental
attachment to family . . .

. . . Each year in a repeating four-year cycle, one of these canonical
texts is the subject of the LDS Church’s Sunday school curriculum for
youth and adults. Members are expected to read the designated scripture
from beginning to end. Each book of scripture is considered as essential
as any other, though the Bible is given two years of this cycle, one
for each testament. The Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham are
treated seamlessly within the Old Testament curriculum, as was done the
day my friend brought his coworker friend to class. There is no canon
within a canon—only a single history of God’s efforts to be heard in all
places and by every generation.

Mormons are not theologians or
even particularly doctrinaire; they are primarily narrativists. They
inhabit the world of the book. They read themselves into the salvation
history it tells and orient themselves to the horizon created by its
promises. In sum, Latter-day Saint scriptures play a definitive role in
the lives of believing readers, informing them of who they are in
relation to God, why they are here and where it is possible for them and
their loved ones to go. In respect to this world and the next, the
Saints’ scriptures give them a distinctively positive sense of human
potential based on God’s capacity and desire to save them and everyone
else, as it says in the Book of Mormon, “through the merits, and mercy,
and grace of the Holy Messiah.”

I would suggest reading the whole article. You can also read my Mormonism in a Nutshell post for another quick presentation of LDS beliefs.

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About Me

I am an Idaho native who likes to read and write about a variety of subjects. I graduated with a B.A. in English from BYU. Mormonism, one of my main interests, has fascinated me ever since my early teenage years.